I. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to machines for reducing materials, including material made of wood or other fibrous materials, and more particularly to drum and disc chippers.
II. Description of the Background
Drum and disc chippers for reducing wood are generally known. New designs however are revolutionizing the industry, see for example U.S. Provisional Patent Application No. 60/269,653, filed Feb. 16, 2001, entitled “Wood Collection and Reducing Machine”, U.S. Provisional Patent Application No. 60/286,477, filed Apr. 25, 2001, entitled “Wood Collection and Reducing Machine”, and to U.S. Non-provisional patent application Ser. No. 10/076,638 filed Feb. 16, 2002, U.S. Non-provisional patent application Ser. No. 10/232,958 filed Aug. 31, 2002, U.S. Non-provisional patent application Ser. No. 10/237,007 filed Sep. 7, 2002, shown as publication numbers 20020113154, 20030062435, 20030071151, entitled “Wood Collection and Reducing Machine” to the same inventors hereof, the disclosures of which are hereby incorporated herein by reference in their entirety. Drum chippers are well suited for reducing large diameter logs while disc chippers are better suited for smaller diameter branches, have the advantage of lower cost and superior discharge. Therefore, what is needed is a new machine design for reducing material that can handle large diameter branches more like a drum chipper but has better material discharge efficiency like a disc chipper.